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Houston (State)
Houston was a state that was created by the United States by being carved from the western portion of the Confederate state of Texas during the Great War, and again in the last years of the Second Great War. History The state was created in 1917 after U.S. forces entered western Texas during the Great War. The U.S. government used as its legal basis the ordinance that admitted Texas to the Union in 1845, which allowed the possibility of Texas being carved up into no more than four states. The U.S. further harkened back into Texas history by naming the new state after Sam Houston, who had opposed Confederate secession during the War of Secession as a Southern Unionist. Houston's capital was Lubbock. Other major cities included Littlefield, Amarillo, and El Paso. The city of Houston, however, was not part of the state. The state bordered New Mexico to the west, Chihuahua to the southwest, occupied Sequoyah to the north and east, and what remained of Texas to the southeast. On July 4, 1918, Houston officially became the 36th state in the Union. Until 1934 (for congressional, 1940 for presidential), it voted Democratic in elections, as the Democrats most closely mirrored the conservative Whig ideology that had been prominent in Texas, this despite the fact that it was a Democratic administration that had defeated the C.S. and carved out the State. The other major U.S. political party, the Socialists, were not favored in Houston for most of its time in the Union. After the inauguration of Jake Featherston as President of the Confederate States in 1934, he began calling for the return of Houston to the C.S. With a possibility of reunification, Houston began electing Freedom Party men to Congress. One prominent Freedom representative of Houston from this era was George H. Mahon. In Congress, Mahon, along with fellow Freedom representatives from both Houston and Kentucky, frequently interrupted sessions by calling for plebiscites to be held in both states (as well as Sequoyah, which was an occupied territory) so that they could return to the Confederacy. As Houston, which had never really been loyal to the U.S., became more rebellious, occupation forces under Daniel MacArthur and Irving Morrell tried, without much success, to put down the Freedom-endorsed rebellion. As per the Richmond Agreement of 1940, a vote was called for January 7, 1941 in Houston, Kentucky, and Sequoyah to determine their status in the U.S. This would hinge on the 1940 U.S. Presidential election between Socialist incumbent Al Smith (who had reached the agreement with Featherston) and Democratic challenger Robert Taft (who opposed it). Since many Houstonians wanted to return to the Confederate States, Houston went Socialist in the 1940 election (the only time it did so in its time in the Union). On January 7, 1941, residents of Houston voted for a return to the Confederacy and to rejoin the state of Texas, ending its 23-year stay in the United States. Featherston welcomed this result, as well as that in Kentucky; he was much less pleased about the result in Sequoyah, which had voted to stay in the United States due to the massive amount of US settlers in the territory. In 1942, during the Second Great War, U.S. forces under Major General Abner Dowling entered west Texas, and several cities began to fall again to the United States. It was around this time that Dowling noticed Camp Determination, located in Snyder, Texas. Dowling made it his goal to liberate the camp, finally taking the ruins of the abandoned camp in September 1943. As Dowling advanced past Lubbock, the United States of America re-admitted the State of Houston into the Union. Jefferson Pinkard, commander of Camp Determination who had fled from Dowling's arrival, moved his base of operations, ironically enough, to the vicinity of Houston, the city. He once remarked on how damnably confusing the shared name was. See also Inconsistencies in Turtledove's Work#Inconsistencies in Southern Victory Category:US States (Fictional Work) Category:Southern Victory Category:Inconsistencies